Gargantua and Pantagruel eBook

Seeing them then turn about on one foot after they
had made their honours, we compared them to your tops
or gigs, such as boys use to whip about, making them
turn round so swiftly that they sleep, as they call
it, and motion cannot be perceived, but resembles
rest, its contrary; so that if you make a point or
mark on some part of one of those gigs, ’twill
be perceived not as a point, but a continual line,
in a most divine manner, as Cusanus has wisely observed.

While they were thus warmly engaged, we heard continually
the claps and episemapsies which those of the two
bands reiterated at the taking of their enemies; and
this, joined to the variety of their motions and music,
would have forced smiles out of the most severe Cato,
the never-laughing Crassus, the Athenian man-hater,
Timon; nay, even whining Heraclitus, though he abhorred
laughing, the action that is most peculiar to man.
For who could have forborne? seeing those young warriors,
with their nymphs and queens, so briskly and gracefully
advance, retire, jump, leap, skip, spring, fly, vault,
caper, move to the right, to the left, every way still
in time, so swiftly, and yet so dexterously, that
they never touched one another but methodically.

As the number of the combatants lessened, the pleasure
of the spectators increased; for the stratagems and
motions of the remaining forces were more singular.
I shall only add that this pleasing entertainment
charmed us to such a degree that our minds were ravished
with admiration and delight, and the martial harmony
moved our souls so powerfully that we easily believed
what is said of Ismenias’s having excited Alexander
to rise from table and run to his arms, with such
a warlike melody. At last the golden king remained
master of the field; and while we were minding those
dances, Queen Whims vanished, so that we saw her no
more from that day to this.

Then Geber’s michelots conducted us, and we
were set down among her abstractors, as her queenship
had commanded. After that we returned to the
port of Mateotechny, and thence straight aboard our
ships; for the wind was fair, and had we not hoisted
out of hand, we could hardly have got off in three
quarters of a moon in the wane.

Chapter 5.XXVI.

How we came to the island of Odes, where the ways
go up and down.

We sailed before the wind, between a pair of courses,
and in two days made the island of Odes, at which
place we saw a very strange thing. The ways
there are animals; so true is Aristotle’s saying,
that all self-moving things are animals. Now
the ways walk there. Ergo, they are then animals.
Some of them are strange unknown ways, like those of
the planets; others are highways, crossways, and byways.
I perceived that the travellers and inhabitants of
that country asked, Whither does this way go?
Whither does that way go? Some answered, Between
Midy and Fevrolles, to the parish church, to the city,
to the river, and so forth. Being thus in their
right way, they used to reach their journey’s
end without any further trouble, just like those who
go by water from Lyons to Avignon or Arles.